Recently, I have found myself looking at everything and asking why it is the way it is. Of course, a brick wall is just a brick wall. But are bricks that size because men’s hands are that size? Are bollards a phallic symbol associated with male power? What would bollards look like if women ruled the world? It’s always worth questioning the most banal parts of society. So here are six objects I think illustrate something about masculinity and its stranglehold on the look and feel of our world.

The tie

The textile phallus is still with us. Men have clung on to it, along with the whole suit that goes with it, for well over a hundred years. It represents an image of what is considered “normal”, but the tie is such a blatant piece of symbolism that it really needs to be questioned. It goes with the Victorian principle of the stiff upper lip, which applies to men who were bred in public schools to rule the empire. You had to suffer a bit, and one of the things you had to suffer was wearing a stiff collar and tie, being buttoned-up, and walking about in the tropical heat in a three-piece suit. It’s all part of the idea that you’ve got standards to maintain, and that you’re tough.

Watches with knobs on

These are such an epitome of masculinity that they have almost become a metaphor for it. Nobody needs a watch any more because you can use a phone to tell the time, but this is often the only piece of jewellery men wear. These watches have got lots of functions, and knobs poking out of them, that they’re never going to need, which is just like masculinity, really: all the ideas of aggression, strength and dominance that come with masculinity are redundant these days. Masculinity is incompatible with the western democratic project.

Fancy watches are an adornment to hint that you might one day climb Everest or dive 200 metres below the surface of the sea. Or that you need a lap timer, because you’re going to take the family car around Silverstone any minute now. And of course what is really appealing about them is that they are very decorative. But men have to pretend they need these features somehow – that one day they will need to know what altitude they’re at.

The Walkie-Talkie building (20 Fenchurch Street, London)

All skyscrapers are to a certain extent phallic, but there is something especially belligerent about the fact that this one got plonked some distance from the cluster that makes up the City of London, that it is hideously ugly, and that it screws up the view along the Thames. It’s like a big, blunt, phallic fist punching upwards. It could only have been designed by a man (Rafael Viñoly).

The issue is that men just don’t notice this kind of territorial marking. Talking to men about masculine society is like talking to fish about water; they don’t notice that masculinity’s value system is the medium in which they move. White, middle-class man is never challenged; he just sails through life because life has been designed by his tribe.

To question that is somehow very difficult. There is an implicit belief that all other identities are distorted versions of his identity. That needs to be challenged.

Tribal-style tattoos

These probably took off in the late 1980s or early 90s, those zig-zaggy, black patterns that are a bit barbed-wiry but kind of abstract, and now you see them everywhere. Often there are desperate attempts to weave them into a Japanese sleeve tattoo, because tribal tattoos have gone out of fashion. But there was a point some time in the early 90s when you would see that design on everything that was supposed to be masculine: bicycle frames, leather jackets, backpacks for school boys … It hints at some sort of primal masculinity that men are going to get back to.

One of the big flaws of masculinity is that it’s nostalgic. Feminism looks to a better time in the future, whereas a lot of masculinity is about complaining that “it’s not like the old days, when men were men”. These symbols, and Bear Grylls-style survival shows, are harking back to an imagined tribal identity where men had their “rightful” place. Men need to find a role in the world that we live in now.

Overcomplicated central heating controls

This is an aspect of masculinity that I would call “the excessively logical”. Men think that because these new central heating controls are incredibly logical, everybody must be able to understand them. I call it a problem of masculinity because it’s men who cling on to the idea that they have the monopoly on rationality. In reality, of course, they are just as emotional as anyone else.

You have to deal with emotions, and to do so you have to know them. Women are much better at that, because they’re brought up to talk about their feelings, so they’re much more aware of when they are feeling angry, upset or frightened. Men are often very insensitive to what’s going on with their emotions.

Pickup trucks

Even the name is ridiculously macho – and that’s before you consider the design of a pickup truck. It’s an enormous vehicle with a tiny passenger space, and a big, unsecured load-carrying area. You often see big pumped-up ones in that American aesthetic with names like “Toreador” and “Warrior”.

Of course, there is nothing a pickup truck can do that a Transit van couldn’t, and a Transit van would be a lot more sensible. But men will always justify them as being functional, and pretend that there is a reason why they need them. Sometimes, once in a blue moon, they’re going to carry something that wouldn’t fit in a Transit van. The other 99.9% of the time a pickup truck really isn’t functional. Spurious function is the frilly decoration of the male aesthetic.